I didn’t confess that while riding the train some mornings I couldn’t stop imagining something bad happening to my mother, that I’d try to replace these fears with my old mantra, then berate myself for adhering to my boyhood superstitions, then tell myself that it was better to be safe than sorry, because maybe the mantra still had some magic left in it, and if I abandoned the mantra I might cause something bad to befall my mother.
